Henry’s Daughter

by Joy Dettman

  Eddy reclaims the packet, dusts it with an old towel. Out of date or not, he’s going to use it. Alan moves to stand in front of the couch – to stop its progress. ‘Leave it where it is. This is stupid. We’re not doing it.’

  ‘We are.’ Lori lifts one end, just to save the vinyl, then she and Jamesy are lifting it, dragging, pushing the old couch through the door, where it jams. Eddy climbs over, helps tug it free. And the green door is open and after one hell of a struggle Mavis’s couch goes through.

  The logical place to set it is against the north wall, the weatherboard wall, but that couch’s metal frame starts marking out a new hole through to Mick’s room before they even get the thing positioned. Have to look for a brick wall. The loo is in the southeast corner, and they can’t sit the couch beside the loo. The hand basin and window are halfway along the south wall; there would be enough room in the southwest corner – except Mavis would be sitting too close to the door, which is dead centre in the west wall.

  They’ve got no choice; it has to be that long north wall, the brick section which Martin joined up to the weatherboards then took out to the edge of the east verandah. It’s still close to the loo, but it’s a long way from the door.

  The room is full of junk. Greg’s old mattress is dragged out and tossed onto the backyard junk heap. They haul out the collapsed chest of drawers, which Eddy names kindling. It goes on the wood heap. He loves cutting kindling. Mick finds the long extension cord Henry always kept with his electric drill. They plug it into the kitchen power point, out one door and beneath the other before carrying in the television, which won’t work without its cable. They pull it out of its socket then Jamesy goes up through the manhole with Eddy’s torch, drags the cable up and across, finds a gap in the brick-room ceiling, and pokes the cable through. It’s not neat, but the television picture is clear. Mavis’s queen-sized bed is too big to drag through the house so Lori says she’ll do a swap. Her bed has got a timber bookshelf bedhead which might do less damage to that weatherboard wall, which it will have to go against. They’ve got no choice; Lori wants to use that bed as a barricade between the couch and the door.

  Then they are done with the furnishings, it’s way past two o’clock and Mavis hasn’t moved. Maybe she’ll never move again.

  ‘She probably needs her stomach pumped,’ Mick says.

  ‘She needs it bypassed,’ Jamesy says, while Eddy and Lori make up the bed with clean sheets, and Mavis’s five big pillows so she can sleep propped up. She’s got the old quilt, but they toss in an extra blanket, a clean towel, a face washer, a comb.

  Lori picks up the half packet of cigarettes from the floor, the lighter beside them. There’s a lot of ash and butts around the loo. She sweeps up, places the lighter in the box and the box on the couch.

  ‘No can do,’ Eddy says. ‘She’ll set fire to her mattress like the crims do in jail.’

  ‘She’ll die of withdrawal,’ Mick says, but Eddy has got those smokes. He removes the lighter then tosses the cigarettes into the stove. Sacrilege. Those things cost money.

  They eat toast, drink cocoa, speak in whispers. It’s like, what have they done? You can’t go around doing things like that – even if it is for the person’s own good. It’s illegal. They know that. They’ve been watching the news on television since they were in the pram.

  But they’ve done it.

  ‘I’m going to bed. I’ll take my globe out of my light so we can leave the one on in the brick room. She’s not going to know where she is when she wakes up,’ Mick says.

  ‘If she wakes up,’ Alan says.

  Lori is awake before eight, and for a moment what happened last night didn’t actually happen. She almost says, do you know what I dreamed we did last night? Except Eddy is in the kitchen and he’s cleaning it up and it looks big and bare. It sounds bare too, like voices sound loud in it. No couch. No television. No Mavis. She’s locked in the brick room, all right, flaked on a bed not wide enough for her. But she’s snoring steady and her face isn’t blue.

  Most of the kids are standing around, feeling jumpy, feeling scared to talk above a whisper. Everything looks different, even the hole in the plaster wall, which they all knew was behind the couch; it’s much worse than they thought it was because while Mick is fitting on his brace, Neil pokes a knife through the weakened plaster on the other side of the hole so he can watch how Mick fits that contraption.

  An empty cornflakes packet and a big cross of Mick’s masking tape almost plugs that couch hole, then they sit, get on with eating the cornflakes. It’s so quiet you can hear them chewing. It’s so quiet you can hear the old battery clock ticking on the mantelpiece. They didn’t know it ticked.

  ‘I’m going to school. I’ll walk,’ Mick whispers.

  ‘If you’re not staying, I’m not staying here. I’ll dink you,’ Alan whispers back.

  ‘You can’t just turn up at the high school. You have to get enrolled or something.’

  ‘I’ll enrol myself, Mick.’

  ‘Do it next week,’ Lori says. ‘You and Eddy stay here and watch her today. And don’t let the little ones go anywhere near Nelly – not until I tell her.’ And by tonight there mightn’t be anything to tell anyway. Mick has got the bread out and the plastic bags, he starts cutting lunches so they form an assembly line, spread, fill, cut and shove sandwiches silently into plastic bags. Alan spreads extra, makes three-layer Vegemite sandwiches.

  ‘You can’t just turn up at school, Alan,’ Mick whispers.

  ‘Well, I’m not going to be here when she wakes up, either. What if she doesn’t wake up?’

  Mick rubs his neck, looks out at the brick room as a shudder works its way down his spine. ‘We’ll see what happens today. Just see. We’ve got to go, Lori. We’re late.’

  Alan takes off for the river with his sandwiches, plus Matty and Timmy and the old pram; Neil and Jamesy head off in the other direction.

  That leaves Eddy. He’s cool.

  He sweeps the kitchen, washes down the benches then makes a small medicinal custard. It’s a bit lumpy but it tastes okay. He makes pancakes too, learned how the last time he was up here, and he makes great pancakes. The clock ticks its way past eleven before he hears movement, hears the loo flush. Only then does he spread his pancakes with apricot jam, an Aropax crushed and mixed with it; he rolls each one, sets them in a row on a big plate, scrapes the custard into a bowl, makes a mug of tea, and while Mavis is trying to get out the door, he carries her breakfast tray to the window. ‘Good morning,’ he says. ‘Can you open your window, please, Mave. I’ve got your breakfast.’

  She stares at him, at the plate, says nothing.

  ‘Your pancakes are getting cold.’ His words don’t appear to be making it through the glass, so he waits until she gives up on the door, squeezes between the foot of her bed and the washbasin and starts belting and yelling at the window instead of opening it. Fast then, Eddy is around the side, slipping the bolt. Plenty of time to run in with the tray and place it on her bed. She’s not a fast mover and it’s a tight squeeze getting back to that door, which he closes, bolts. Then he bolts, spends the day in town, eats McDonald’s for lunch, spends an hour in the supermarket buying low-fat ice-cream, two tins of sugar-free pineapple, a bottle of diet chocolate topping, a new broom and a bundle of six cheap tea towels because the ones in that house are germ factories.

  Alan’s day is productive too. He’s been sitting with a fisherman and taking every European carp he pulls in, tossing them flapping into the pram. Matty won’t share it with gasping fish, so Alan ends up filling the pram with firewood and sitting Matty on top. The twins are waiting at the gate with their loot when the others arrive home; they don’t want to brave the house alone, due to Mavis is awake and she’s letting the whole neighbourhood know she’s awake.

  Eddy and Lori offer her a bowl of ice-cream, pineapple and chocolate topping. She doesn’t open the window but her coffee mug cracks the glass. They stand back, wait for her to settle down. She doesn’t.
The mug smashes through. They run, open the door while she’s bellowing through broken glass and they place their offering on her bed.

  They get the stove going, get Alan’s fish cleaned up and wrapped in supermarket bags and they are trying to peer through that broken window when the empty ice-cream bowl is tossed through, both glass and china flying free. She’s more active than she’s been in months, panting for her smokes, leaning against the door, hitting at it.

  ‘We’ve got to get plastic containers and some decent plastic mugs,’ Lori says, peering though the break while the air inside turns a brighter shade of blue and Mavis’s colour is starting to match it.

  ‘We can’t do this, Lori,’ Mick says. ‘She’s giving herself a heart attack.’

  ‘We’re not giving up before we start, Mick. Who said it was going to be easy?’ Lori comments, and she returns to the kitchen, starts making a small medicated custard, making it smooth, pouring it lovingly over two beaten eggs. She adds vanilla while Mavis gasps out just how she’s going to murder the lot of them.

  They can’t get the custard in. She’s onto their trick of getting her to the window before they open that door, so she’s not leaving the door, and every minute or so she’s heaving her shoulder against it. She hasn’t got a lot of power but she’s got a lot of weight and the three screws holding the slide bolt are rocking in their holes. It’s Jamesy who ransacks Mick’s screw collection and comes back with six long ones, the screwdriver and Henry’s electric drill.

  ‘We can’t do this!’ Mick is growing louder with his protest; maybe he has to be louder; there’s a lot of noise to compete with. He takes the drill, though, when he sees Jamesy isn’t going to give up until he wrecks it, and he takes the fatter, longer screws, puts them in the slide bolt and in its keeper, squeezing a bit of wood glue into the screw holes, using all of the screw holes instead of the half Martin used. He has plenty of worried eyes assisting him. Others glance occasionally through the broken window while Eddy wriggles a bit of the glass free.

  ‘Pour the custard into a container with a lid, and we’ll drop it through to the basin,’ he says. So that’s what they do while Mavis and Mick are working on opposite sides of the door.

  They wait. It takes forever, but she finds the custard, eats it. Half an hour later the custard works and Mavis is sitting panting on her couch, watching the television.

  ‘We have the technology,’ Eddy says.

  ‘We can rebuild her,’ Jamesy grins. They are sweating, and the day isn’t even that hot.

  ‘Shut up, you morons. We’re going to have to medicate her three or four times a day, like it says on the packets.’

  Nine o’clock and the little ones, worn out with fishing and no television, have been in bed for hours; the big ones are still wandering, wondering, peering in that window as they walk by, but not letting her see them. She’s quieter when she doesn’t see them.

  It’s Alan who finds a length of chipboard, probably left over from the kitchen floor when it got extended. Like Mick, he’s been against this plan from the beginning, but it looks as if he might be coming around. ‘If we could get the broken glass out, we could reach through and screw this onto the windowsill to put her meals on.’

  It’s a pure brilliant idea; they can’t keep putting food on her bed or dropping it into the washbasin, but they have to wait until Mavis is sleeping to do it. She’s still watching television.

  They give her more medicated custard at eleven and a packet of sugar-free mints.

  ‘What time did she wake up this morning?’ Mick says.

  ‘Eleven.’

  Mick nods, goes to bed. They’re all worn out with lack of sleep, and stress and guilt. They sleep like logs, and if Mavis yells for her smokes, they don’t hear her.

  Eddy’s Xanax custard is served four times a day and apricot jam on toast or pancakes disguises the taste of the Aropax Mavis has with her breakfast, which doesn’t seem to be altering her brain waves any, not by Friday, the day Martin comes, and thank God they hear his ute. The kids run out to the fence, talk to him out there. He’s got a pile of fruit and vegetables from Karen’s farm and he wants to carry the boxes in.

  ‘It might be better if you don’t stir her up,’ Eddy says.

  ‘How come you’re back here?’

  ‘Just visiting for the weekend. It’s our birthday.’

  He says the same to Nelly when she wanders over the next day – about the stirring up and the visiting, except he says he’s visiting for a week. The other kids are still pretty much in shock. They are not looking at Nelly, just hoping Mavis won’t start yelling.

  Half of Eddy’s ten-day camp in Tasmania has been used up, like his Xanax custard powder – more than half of that has been used up. Eight will only go into fifty six times. Eddy is sitting at the table crushing Valium tablets and pouring the powder into a jam jar where eight heaped tablespoons of custard powder await their additive, when Mick suggests that those pills could lose their potency lying around mixed up with other stuff, which could be the reason Mavis is refusing to act tranquil.

  Eddy stops crushing. ‘So we crush as needed, as with the Aropax?’

  ‘We crush? You’re going home next week.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve been thinking that Mave and her SWAT team have been back to St Kilda in that old furniture van and they got me again. She really wants to keep me this time,’ Eddy says as he caps what he’s crushed, places the jam jar with the tablets on top of the cupboard.

  ‘Did she get you before you went on the camp or after?’ Lori says.

  ‘Before. Otherwise Mum will sue the school for losing me. She likes suing people.’ He’s looking around the room and not much liking what he’s seeing, but his eyes are taking in everything, absorbing it, accepting or rejecting it. He shrugs, draws his eyes back to the faces watching him. He raises his eyebrows, shrugs again. ‘You know, don’t you, that Mum can’t legally take either of us back, not if our natural mother wants us?’

  ‘She doesn’t want any of us – except to murder us. You heard her.’

  ‘Whatever.’ He’s looking at the walls, at the ceiling, one hand rubbing his mouth. ‘I heard Watts telling Mum and Alice one day that they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if they took Mave to court. Judges always give children to their natural mothers. He also said, as the other siblings were with the natural mother, and she owns her own house, the courts wouldn’t take Eva’s claim seriously. Also, he said that Eva and Alice’s relationship would probably go against them – if the hearing came up before some homophobic judge.’

  ‘Does he know about them?’

  ‘Of course he does. He knows everything, and even if he didn’t know before, he knew when he made the new will after we came home from England and Mave still had Alan. Mum was going through one of her dying periods so she made a new will leaving everything to her partner of twenty years.’

  ‘Old Alice, her partner?’

  ‘They are sort of married, you know. And old Alice wouldn’t care if the whole world knew she was a lesbian. I think she’d like it. It’s Mum who tries to cover it up, and if she’s dead, she’s not going to care much, is she? Watts said that by using that terminology it makes the will legal, otherwise Mave, being Mum’s next of kin, could probably try to break Eva’s will like she tried to break Grandmother’s.’

  ‘How come she couldn’t . . . couldn’t break it?’

  Eddy shrugs.

  ‘Do you know anything about Mavis’s father?’ Lori asks. ‘Was he going to leave all of his money to Mavis or something?’

  ‘I don’t know that either. All I know is he died about seven years before our grandmother. Mum never mentions her father. I’ve never even seen a photo of him. Don’t know what he looked like.’

  ‘The image of Vinnie. We’ve got a photo. So, Mavis being the baby of the family could have been his pet and he could have planned to leave her the lot and we would have been rich.’ Lori walks off to find the photograph.

 
‘She would have eaten it all,’ Jamesy says.

  Alan’s not interested in Grandfather or his money, only freedom. ‘So . . . so, what you were saying is, Eva can’t make us go back.’

  ‘Not if Mavis wants to keep us.’ Eddy looks at the photograph Lori has tossed onto the table. Not much to see, only a big hand-painted face, too blue eyes, a grey suit and a lot of wavy red hair. He shrugs. ‘Watts told Mum, when she was trying to get you back that time, that the only hope she had was to prove Mave an unfit mother.’ Lori and Jamesy laugh. Those two saw the worst of Mavis. Mick doesn’t laugh, he takes the photograph, thinks of Vinnie, wonders where he is.

  ‘So, you can live here with us if you want to?’ Lori says.

  ‘Go feral.’ Eddy starts playing the monkey, like, scratching at his armpits.

  They make the phone call that night from Nelly’s – which is a mistake. Lori tries to keep her talking so Eddy can speak in private but Nelly is too smart. She knows something odd is going on over the road. Lori hasn’t told her about the lock-down, due to that lock-down isn’t going to last. Mavis is going totally out of her brain.

  Eddy is talking fast as Nelly starts dusting the doorframes beside that phone. He doesn’t say much, just about the furniture van and the off-duty policeman who was leading the team who specialise in kidnapping kids. He’s holding that phone pressed close against his ear so Eva’s words are trapped.

  ‘I’ve got the gear I packed for the camp and Alan’s clothes fit me. I’m okay. Yes. She’s knitting me a school jumper at the moment. Yes.’

  Alice starts her barking; she must be on a second phone. Lori can hear her two metres away. Eddy is not into inventing fiction for her. ‘Got to go. Tell Mum I’ll call her later.’ He hangs up.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Nelly asks. ‘What furniture van? What off-duty policeman?’ Eddy shrugs. He’s agitated, wants to leave. ‘Who is knitting you a school jumper? And what’s your aunty doing, letting you two miss so much school?’

  ‘We’re gifted. We don’t need much school,’ Eddy says and he’s out the door, Nelly behind him.